LTE USB ExpressCard Supports Category 3 Speeds

The FourGee ExpressCard UE (user equipment) from Altair Semiconductor supports Category 3 download speeds of 100 Mbits/s and upload speeds of 50 Mbits/s. According to the company, it’s the first Long-Term Evolution (LTE) Category 3 ExpressCard. It also consumes less than 2.5 W, which is within the USB specification power budget. It comes in an ExpressCard34 form factor with a USB 2.0 HS host interface. And, it’s available in select frequency-division duplex/time-division duplex (FDD/TDD) bands in the 700- to 2700-MHz range.

Device manufacturers can use it as a trial and interoperability testing (IOT) tool. They also can use it as a reference design in developing commercial products based on Altair’s FourGee family of LTE chips, which include the FourGee 3100 LTE CAT-3 baseband processor, the FourGee 6150 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transceiver, which supports LTE-TDD, and the FourGee 6200 multiband LTE MIMO transceiver, which covers all global FDD/TDD bands.